Linux Tutorial Series – 67 – apropos, whatis and info – commands I never used

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

Hello there,

I wanted to introduce you to 3 commands I never used, but may come in handy in some cases (although so far I have never encountered them).

The first is apropos. It is used to find commands appropriate for something. I use Google for this task.

The second is whatis. It is used for short, one-line command descriptions. I use --help or (much less frequently) man. Much more frequently, I use Google to find out what the command does.

The last command on the list is info. I use man over info and Google over man. To add something here – I have seen some instances where people recommend checking out info pages (accessed through the info command), but that is recommended in an answer on StackOverflow which gives the answer and then suggests looking at the info pages.

There you have it – the commands and the alternatives I use. One of them is Google, but hey, if you are on a desert island and you simply must figure out what command is appropriate for something, use apropos.

Thank you for reading! Hope you learned something useful.